HH_mirror

Laura couldn't help but grin at the quick ogle. Worth every penny, she thought.

"Oh, you know I always love your company. You sure you're up for going around a party looking like, you know, a couple?"

Galahad stopped. I know that smell! The cookies Terran cats can't have. Chocolate. He glanced over at Laura and saw her chatting cozily with Grant. Oh, why not live dangerously?

He made a flying leap and snagged a chocolate with one paw on the way down.

From:

"It's not like we've been entirely discreet before," Grant pointed out.

From:

"This is a point," Laura conceded.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of flying treecat. "Arrgghh. One second, I better go rescue the buffet from Galahad. Wanna help? Maybe get a drink before we start working the crowds?"

From:

"Sure," he said, happily trailing along behind her. "You get the 'cat, and I'll get the drinks. Scotch for you?" he asked.

From:

Chance, who's just absented herself from her previous conversation (abandoning her dinner plate in the process), catches sight of a couple she considers friends of hers. She puts two and two together, or more accurately one and one, and is happy for them. "Good to see you," she says to the two of them.

From:

"Hi Dr. Silvey," Laura said with a smile. "'Scuse me one second, I've got a loose 'cat to corral..." She bent down and her arm shot out to catch her treecat. (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1114818.html?thread=56440514#t56440514)

From:

"My friends call me Chance." Unknowingly affected by magic chocolate, she's unperturbed by the treecat. "So that's your big cat."

From:

"Yep, big cat. Gonna get bigger too, if he sneaks candy from the buffet." She smiled down at the 'cat. "Chance, this is Galahad; Galahad, Chance."

Laura held the chocolate up to her eye level. "Looks pretty good. Smells like vanilla, maybe."

From:

"Oh, the chocolates are lovely," says Chance. "I wouldn't have thought it safe for a treecat to ingest chocolate, by analogy with Earth felines." Somehow it doesn't seem so strange that she's actually saying things like by analogy with Earth felines in complete sincerity. "I don't think mine was vanilla. You'll have to tell me what that one's like. I thought I was hungry before I ate the chocolate and now I don't feel I could eat anything else." Doesn't feel like she needs anything at all, come to think of it. She's not even cold anymore though she's wearing the fluffy coat by habit.

From:

Laura grins. Chance's mood has improved; what would we do without chocolate?

"Don't know if this is dangerous for him, and we're not gonna find out. Nice try, fella." Galahad sniffs a sniff of wounded dignity. "Well, let's see..."

She takes a bite of the chocolate. "Oh yeah. Vanilla creme center. Perfect." She finishes the other half of the piece. "Party seems to be agreeing with you, Chance. I'm glad. Somethin' about weddings, isn't there? Like a glow that spreads out over everybody."

From:

Grant came back to the conversation with two drinks in his hands. He passed one to Laura, and kept the other for himself. "Hello, Dr. Silvey," he said to Chance. "I see you've already met Ms. Palmer, so I guess I don't have to make introductions. How are you enjoying the reception?"

From:

"It's lovely," says Chance, with all sincerity. When she'd come in she'd thought it looked like quite the strange assemblage of people and decorations. She guesses it's grown on her, or something. "And you?"

From:

"I'm enjoying it. It's always nice to be at a party where you have absolutely no social responsibilities whatsoever." He was about to comment that she certainly seemed to be feeling better when he noticed that Laura looked ill. "Excuse me," he said, and turned to his girlfriend.

From:

"Mmm. Thank you. Perfect chaser for a chocolate."

That was odd. One sip of scotch and she was already feeling...fuzzy? She put a hand to her head and waited for the wave of something to pass.

From:

"Are you all right?" Grant asked, setting his drink down and gently placing his hand on her shoulder.

From:

The wave passed, and she nodded. "Yeah, I'm -" She held up the hand holding the glass. "That's odd."

Her hand was opaque, washed out, around the solidity of the glass. And her clothes were different.

"Oh boy," she muttered. "Here we go again with the chocolate candy. Couldn't it at least've left me my party dress?"

From:

Grant, for his part, had jerked his hand away from her so fast you'd think he had been burned. "You're a cartoon," he said, stating the blindingly obvious.

From:

Chance, on the other hand, seemed unperturbed. "It's a lovely dress anyhow," she said. "Curiouser and curiouser."

From:

She twisted her neck around to look behind her. Yep, 3-D ink and paint Laura. "Sure looks that way," she replied to Grant. "If I'm a cartoon, shouldn't I not be able to hold this glass?"

She arched an eyebrow at Chance. "Yeah. More in line with what I usually wear. You're really takin' this in stride. Have you just hit the point where you've gone numb to the weird finally?"

From:

Chance shrugs. She gets on some level that weird things are happening. They just don't bother her. "Considering what's happened to us before we got here," she says, "this seems fairly benign."

From:

Laura grins. "Yep. Here's some words to live by: 'Worse things have happened to me.' I think you and I probably should like needlepoint that on a pillow."

She looked down at the glass in her hand. "I wonder if I can still drink this. I could sure use it right about now."

From:

"If you're a cartoon, I think you should be on a piece of paper. The glass is probably the least of your worries." Speaking of glasses, Grant picked his back up and took a much larger drink than he normally would. Any ideas he'd had about what they would be doing after the party had died a horrible, horrible death.

From:

"It works out pretty well, wouldn't you say? She can still hold the glass, so she can still enjoy the wine." For Chance, every glass is half-full tonight.

From: